Well how have I achieved the look of a Dubliner in three short weeks? First it was by reviewing what I had in my backpack that I take to Uni. In the morning the backpack weighs about 7kg and I have a quick 30 minute jaunt to get to the campus. By 7 pm however, in the dark of the night, the backpack has grown to at least 15kgs - so what was I to do?

I took everything out and started again. Of course everything went back in except for what I always thought had been an essential items - the umbrella and raincoat. Yes, I am just like a local. When it starts raining now I wrap my scarf around my neck and half of my face, pull the beanie down and then pull almost my whole head into my coat . It's a sort of teenage ninja mutant turtle look - OK perhaps without the teenage ninja bit.

They don’t use the term “mad as cut snakes” in Ireland owing to the belief that they were cast out by St Patrick - though this is actually a furphy as snakes had disappeared hundreds of years before St Pat. And saying” only mad dogs and Englishmen” is definitely not appropriate in Ireland either – so what do you call a group of six people who voluntarily go out to climb 700 odd metres, part of it up the face of a water fall, in rain and a temperature of about five degrees?

Well they call us the B Group of the Bray Hill Strollers – yet another bit of perjury because I have looked up the definition of stroller and it is defined as someone who is walking in a slow leisurely way for pleasure – none of the definitions mention climbing and having to think “three points of contact at all times” – one of the rules in scrambling up vertical ropes or ladders when on a sailing ship.

Despite having to haul ourselves up some pretty steep parts we all enjoyed ourselves until the bog. We had to cross about two kilometers of bog which was very unstable looking but the leader knew the way so we set out confidently. Squelching would have to be the best adjective of the experience of the bog until something quite dramatic happened. I was walking one step behind Doreen when she suddenly sank up to her thighs in black peat bog. Both her walking sticks went in almost up to their handles and she was firmly stuck. Those people who bush walk and have come across a snake in the middle of a track will know how quickly I stopped behind Doreen – my survival instinct is alive and well. Now of course my next instinct was to back away and take a photograph but instead I uselessly stayed and tried to help pull her out by her arms. Definitely not the way to do it as she nearly lost her boots. The leader came back and helped her by slowly pulling out one leg at a time. Give me snakes any day!

I have had a lovely week experiencing the generosity of Irish hospitality. I went out and was given lunch and dinner with Jim, David and Ita Brody (Maeve May’s sister) at Howth a lovely harbour suburb of Dublin. Then the following night Doreen (of peat bog fame) invited me home after the walk to have dinner which her daughter had cooked. Her 18 year old daughter and a girlfriend reminded me of what I was missing at home as they chatted away and got ready to go out - a lovely way to finish the day.

Have you ever done anything so tiring that the next day you feel like you are pushing through treacle? Well that is the best way to describe how I started the day – very slowly. My cultural Sundays continued with a church crawl through Dublin. I walked around to visit a number of beautiful churches including St Patrick’s Cathedral and then finished with a service at St Francis of Xavier where the Dublin Gospel Choir sang. The choir was very powerful and could have been inspiring but during the quieter moments of the service the acoustics of the church continued to reverberate with the cries of a loud three year old – very difficult to think of world peace when you are simultaneously plotting an infanticide!

Love Cathy

Spot the people who chose to ford a stream rather than walk an extra half an hour to keep our feet dry. We had walked for 7.5 hours and we all chose wet feet.